Published in 1964, My Years with General Motors was an immediate best-seller and
today is considered one of the few classic books on management. The book is the ghostwritten memoir
of Alfred P. Sloan, Jr. (1875-1966), whose business and management strategies enabled General Motors
to overtake Ford as the dominant American automobile manufacturer in the 1920s and 1930s.What has
been largely unknown until now is that My Years with General Motors was almost not published.
Although it was written with the permission of General Motors -- and slated for publication in
October 1959 -- at the last minute General Motors tried to suppress the book out of fears that some
of the material in it could become evidence in an antitrust action against the company. This book,
by John McDonald, Sloan's ghostwriter, tells the behind-the-scenes story of the book's writing, its
attempted suppression, and the lawsuit that eventually led to its publication. McDonald's narrative
is partly the David-and-Goliath story of a lone journalist taking on the world's then-largest
corporation and partly a study of strategy in its own right. McDonald's struggle to publish the book
led him to navigate a complicated course among the competing interests of General Motors, Fortune
magazine (his employer), and Time, Inc. (Fortune's owner). In many ways this ""book about the book""
parallels the Sloan book as a tale of successful, brilliantly planned strategy.